Congress never READ the frikkin' thing
Any ... ANY statement that begins with or uses the the phrase of "Congress never .. " or "Congress did .. " is a straw man argument ... CONGRESS NEVER READ THE THING AND WAS FORCED TO PASS IT WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THEY WERE DOING !!!
It's a moot point to argue if they were forced or not ... the point is ... no one knew what was in it so they can not be accused of determining anything
"Congress “never contemplated withholding premium subsidies”
is a boojit statement to fool stupid people into thinking this is a legitimate legislative act
You are correct.
Since Congress didn’t know at was in it, it Constitutionally is not a valid Law.
It’s certainly the case that if this bill had been passed under “regular order” there would have been much more in the way of documentation (e.g.. conference committee report, more extensive floor debate etc.) from which to hypothetically infer congressional intent. But especially once Dems lost their 60th vote when Scott Brown won the special election on January 19, 2010, regular order got tossed out the window. The final bill was crafted in secret in the leaders’ chambers and few of the dutiful minions voting for the mess that emerged bothered to read it. It was a classic case study in why no sane person would ever want to put these clowns in charge of 1/6 of the economy in the first place.